Home exercise is becoming increasingly more popular. Home exercise offers the health benefits of regular exercise while recognizing that many people have difficulty in finding sufficient time in their schedule for a full workout at a health club or gymnasium. An exerciser may exercise at home whenever the exerciser's schedule permits. This flexibility in scheduling often allows for a more consistent and thus healthful exercise regime.
Home exercise, however, has its drawbacks. In particular, in order to exercise all or most of the muscle groups, multiple pieces of home exercise equipment may be required. Furthermore, these multiple pieces of equipment may require permanent installation in the exerciser's home.
Permanent or not, many popular pieces of home exercise equipment occupy a great deal of space. This makes the use of this equipment impractical in homes or apartments which do not have the required extra space. Furthermore, non-permanent pieces of equipment are often difficult to disassemble and may require much storage space even when disassembled. A user must then often choose between an exercise device providing a complete exercise regime and a device which fits the exerciser's home space.
There is, thus, a need for exercise equipment which may be easily stored when not in use, does not occupy a great deal of space when in use and provides for exercising all or most of the muscle groups.
Exercise devices are known in which a user, positioned on a support platform, propels that support platform up an inclined ramp. One way by which the platform may be propelled is by pulling a cable connected to the support platform through a variety of pulleys positioned on the exercise device. By changing positions on the platform and by changing the method by which the platform is propelled, a user can exercise multiple muscle groups.
While early versions of these devices did not allow for easy storage, later designs were proposed that allowed for some type of disassembly in the design. Even the later designs do not, however, provide complete foldability of the exercise unit. The designs include some separate elements which must be disengaged to allow for foldability of the device. Thus, these designs cannot be folded and stored as a unit. Moreover, the designs are not easily converted from the folded stored state to an unfolded state for use.
Another problem with early versions of these devices is that they did not allow for a wide variety of different types of muscle exercises, especially multiple muscle exercises for each specific muscle group.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for an inclined ramp exercise device which is easily foldable to a size which allows for easy storage, is easily unfolded into a useable state, and which allows for exercising multiple muscle groups and multiple exercises for each muscle group.
There is also a need for multiple exercises, sequences of exercises, instruction, and education related to an inclined ramp exercise device.
In the inclined ramp exercise device, a user can make the workout more difficult by increasing the angle and height of the inclined ramp on which the platform is propelled. In the past, this was manually performed by the user by lifting one end of an inclined ramp and setting the inclined ramp at a desired height and angle of inclination for the desired level of difficulty. A user may have to lift and reset the inclined ramp multiple times, depending on which exercises the user is performing and the desired resistance level. This can be tiring and cumbersome.
Thus, a need also exist for an inclined ramp exercise device and a method where the exercise device includes an automatic lift mechanism for automatically setting the height and angle of the inclined ramp.
Alternatively, in circumstances where a consumer can not justify the additional cost of an automatic lift mechanism (e.g., such as, but not limited to home gym use), a need exists for a lift-assist mechanism to assist the user in lifting the inclined ramp and setting the inclined ramp at a desired height and angle of inclination for the desired level of difficulty.